Thursday, November 20, 2008

From one house negro to another

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Pakistan to blame for black plague

COPENGHAGEN, 14 August: Danish scientists studying ancient rat corpses, preserved in an old bog discovered recently, have stumbled on a startling discovery. The rats appear to be carrying strands of cotton that are only found in Pakistan. "That suggests Pakistan was involved in the black plague," said Martin Sorensen from the Danish National Research Institute. The rats have been carbon-dated to be 500 years old. That would mean they lived around the time of the black plague, one of the darkest periods in Europe's history when bubonic plague, believed to have been carried by rats, killed half of the continent's population. "It's possible the ISI was behind the black plague, but the picture is incomplete," said Darrell Rimple from the RAND Corporation. "But that would be consistent with what Pakistan, and especially the ISI does. Of course, Afghanistan is a democratic country ruled by freedom-loving people and the US would never dream of covertly participating in activities that would lead to the deaths of many people," Rimple added. For James Ripper, a Pentagon spokesman, the equation is much simpler. "Iraq has turned out to be a bad investment. Sure there's oil, but there's just too many Iraqis above it. Iran isn't playing by the rules, it's not being belligerent enough... on the other hand Pakistan is just perfect. It's Muslim, it has nukes, and there's plenty of terrorists there," Ripper added. "We know that because most of them used to be on our payroll. Some of them still are."

Friday, July 25, 2008

MustafaQadri.net

Hey folks, I'm going on extended leave to attend to other matters. Don't worry it's nothing serious. But in the mean time may I suggest you check out mustafaqadri.net the brand spanking new website of a freelance journalist of the same name. You may have seen my links to his work before. He mainly focuses on Middle East politics and issues and social justice generally. But there's heaps of other great stuff on his site as well, like photos of his travels and videos of the interviews he does. He's currently based in Pakistan.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

ANC veterans visit West Bank

Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African delegation’s several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron settlers’ leader Baruch Marzel: “These provocations didn’t come from us. I’m Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear from other Jews?”

Friday, July 11, 2008

Seconds anyone?

It would be the first time I spoke to the man who would eventually become a household name in Australia. Who would become Aussie Islam's unofficial and unelected spokesman. Who, together with a certain Sydney sheik, would turn Aussie Arabs and Muslims into a combination of household joke and serious threat to social cohesion. And who many Muslims (to use Keating's phrase) might well describe as "unrepresentative swill".

The grim logic of Jerusalem

He told me the story with resignation and not a word of hatred. His eyes only teared up when he explained how he had to pull his kids from school and tell them they could no longer play with their friends. Two years later, he wept again, holding my hand, when his brother's house was demolished, the standard punishment for adding floors without a municipal permit. Such permits are almost never granted. Wholesale demolition is a fate no Jewish house, for departing from a building code, will ever suffer.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Mindless terrorism or something else?

In Israel Husam Dwayat is almost solely being referred to as “the terrorist”. The term has an intriguing linguistic pedigree. A terrorist has no name, no gender, no history. A terrorist is but a one-dimensional character, the one who terrorises. But what if we unmasked this terrorist, what if we recognised his acts for the crimes that they are? A criminal has the capacity for everything that is human. He can also be a victim or a father. Husam Dwayat was both of these things.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Women and war

Thursday, July 03, 2008

One act of torture worth accepting

The agents then draped a towel over his face and began pouring water onto it for several seconds before Hitchens signalled them to stop.[my emphasis]

I'm glad we finally got a definitive answer from a fat, self-righteous, white, pro-Iraq invasion journalist with know expertise in medicine or international law.

Interesting that they say 'several seconds'. What did my English teacher say in the 8th grade? Several equates to anything more than 3 or 4. Why do I suspect actual torture victims would have had to endure waterboarding for a lot longer than that?